


In These Small Hours

by lokobookworm95



Category: Leverage
Genre: F/M, Gen, Sandy the hacker, Tom the sleeze, Victoria the homeless lady, varying ocs of varying stupidity, you can tell I know nothing about hacking at all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-26
Updated: 2014-12-26
Packaged: 2018-03-03 15:47:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2856377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lokobookworm95/pseuds/lokobookworm95
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Leverage crew is well known in their circles, even if their marks never know who they actually are. Of course, the general public has no knowledge of them or their work, and the crew would very much like to keep it that way.</p>
<p>AKA: A glimpse of the crew during their down time, technically working but really not, and definitely working for unclear reasons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In These Small Hours

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> I hope you like it!

Tom’s never seen the girl at the bar before, and a few minutes of watching her had managed to confirm only two things: she was hot with a capital H, and she was completely crazy, if the way she was sorting her pretzels and attempting to blow bubbles in her alcohol could attest. But still—this chick was really hot. And maybe she was equally crazy in the bedroom? Couldn’t hurt to try, anyway. With that thought in mind, he grabbed his empty glass and moved up to the bar.

“Hey, bartender! Two beers, one for me and one for my lady friend here!” He jerked a thumb at her and grinned as she turned to look at him. “Hey babe, my name’s Tom. What’s yours?” Hot blonde stared at him for a long, stretched out moment, and Tom felt his grin freeze on his face. 

Then she snorted, said “go away,” and turned back to the bar. He shook off the weird feeling he was getting and carried on. 

“C’mon, beautiful, don’t be like that! I’m just trying to be polite!” She kept sorting the pretzels, obviously ignoring him, and he was just buzzed enough that continuing sounded like a great idea, especially as the beers had just arrived. “Dollface, c’mon now. At least try the drink? The beer is great here! And,” he lowered his voice, “the company is even better.” 

Hot blonde finally turned to look at him again, but this wasn’t any better, really, as the look on her face was one of disgust. “Right. Go away now.” She looked away, then back, and added “Please.” as an obvious afterthought. 

But Tom wasn’t deterred, especially now that he had her attention. “But babe, I’m just trying to make conversation! Nothing wrong with being polite, is there?” 

She continued to say nothing, but turned to stare at him, and for some reason he saw her hand inching towards a fork on the bar. And then, suddenly, her gaze shot to someone behind him, and she started to smile. 

She got up from the bar with a muttered goodbye, stumbled against him slightly as she hopped down from the barstool, and headed out into the rest of the bar. 

“Yeah, well, good riddance!” he yelled after her, grabbing the beer she’d left behind and downing it quickly. “You don’t know what you’re missing!” He turned back to the bar, but out of the corner of his eye he saw her join two dudes at a table; a black dude and a hippie, judging by the length of his hair. All three of them were smiling, even if the hippie’s was more of a grin than a smile, and the black dude took the opportunity to throw his arm around the hot chick's shoulders. He snorted and ordered another drink. It was her loss anyway. 

(He didn’t discover his missing wallet until the end of the night came and he tried to pay. He never even thought to suspect the hot blonde he’d talked to for a few minutes that night.)

~.~

Hacking was very obviously illegal, which was why Sandy never did it at her own house, only ever at internet cafés and libraries. No need to make it easier for The Man to find you, after all. But today was more frustrating than normal. She wasn't really trying to do much, just hack into some weird company’s email to see if there were any secrets worth selling, but the firewalls were like nothing she’d ever seen before. Everything she threw at it just bounced off again! 

Not at all what she’d expected from a company with a pretentious name like Leverage Consulting and Associates. Really? And what kind of consulting work did they do, that they needed serious security like this? 

She was just going to give it up as a lost cause when a ping alerted her that she was being reverse hacked. “Oh no you don’t,” she muttered to herself, and flexed her fingers as she prepared to dive in. 

The unknown hacker and she did battle for several minutes before she became fully aware of the fact that they were definitely just toying with her, and everything she did was countered within moments. There was no way she was winning this fight. 

And just as she had that thought, her computer shut down everything she’d been doing, and instead went to a screen that said only **YOU’VE BEEN PWNED, NOOB**. She glared at her screen and prepared to try to do something to fix it, when her computer just went dead. 

Sandy stared in shock for a few long minutes, before finally giving in and packing everything up to go home. She’d had enough computer time for today, she thought. 

(And when she finally got her computer to turn on again, the only thing she could recover from it was a single line of text: **DON’T MESS WITH LEVERAGE**.)

~.~

Victoria has lived on the streets for a long, long time now, and until today she could’ve sworn she’d seen and met every type of homeless person there was. Ones who couldn’t find a job or couldn’t keep a job; addicts and prostitutes; people on the run, either from the law or just from other people. Angry ones, furious with the world for failing them, or themselves for failing the world. Suffering ones, who just had nowhere else to go and no one in the whole world to turn to. Or her type, who had just given up and accepted that this was the best they were going to get in life, and so they might as well make the most of it. 

But this guy… this guy seemed different. 

And the worst part was that she just couldn’t figure out why. He looked like everyone else, wore the same tired, worn out clothing, and he even smelled the same! So what was up with this guy? Why didn’t he seem normal to her? 

She’d been watching him for two days now, and she still hasn’t been able to figure it out. It’s driving her nuts. Or, at least, more nuts than she already is. They’re in a soup kitchen now, and if Victoria were a more courageous woman, she would just go up to talk to him instead of quietly following him from a distance. 

If she were a more courageous woman, she wouldn’t be living on the streets. 

So she just keeps watching him, trying not to be too obvious about it—he doesn’t seem like a violent type, but then they never really do. And it’s thanks to her watching him that she sees the fight. 

He’s obviously outnumbered, but also clearly holding his own, and Victoria’s content to watch from behind a dumpster. She has no idea what’s going on, and why these well-dressed men are attacking one of her fellow homeless, but she hasn’t made a habit of getting herself killed, so she stays back. It’s only when she sees one of the ones on the ground, one of the ones her guy must have thought was out cold, pull out a gun, that she reacts. 

She’s never been courageous, and to the end of her days she doesn’t know why, but she takes a bullet to her shoulder for a man she’s never talked to and who doesn’t even know she exists. 

The pain carries her away for a bit. 

When she manages to focus again, her guy is leaning over her, saying something repeatedly in a hard, insistent voice. “Lady, can you hear me? I need you to acknowledge me. Can you hear me?” She blinks up at him, and for a split second she could swear she sees him relax, before he’s off and talking again. “Lady, I’ve called for an ambulance, they’ll be here in just a little bit, but you need to stay awake, okay, stay with me, I need you to-” but Victoria never finds out what he needs, because that’s when she passes out. 

She wakes up in the hospital a day later, in pain but on the good drugs. When she protests and tells the doctors that there’s no way she can possibly pay for this, the doctor says not to worry, because everything has been paid in full, and that there’s an envelope waiting for her when she’s better able to concentrate. 

When she finally opens the envelope, there isn’t anything inside but a check, made out to her, that’s for an exorbitant amount of money. Victoria feels like she might pass out again at the sight of all of those zeroes. It’s enough for her to not have to worry about food for months, maybe even years, and she can’t believe her eyes. 

The signature is so scribbled she can’t make out a name, and it only says that it’s from a company called Leverage Consulting and Associates, which she’s never even heard of before. When she asks a nurse who left it there for her, the nurse admits that no one had any idea—it had just been there one day, as if it had appeared by magic. 

When she’s finally released from the hospital that wasn’t even able to tell her who had paid for her visit because of “privacy reasons,” she heads straight to the bank, where she is assured that the check is good, and that all of that money is hers now. She cannot believe her good fortune. It is literally too good to be true. But what else can she believe? 

(She never does discover the name of the man whose life she had saved, or why he was so different, not even when she is old and living in a home that she bought with the money she’d been given because of it. 

She does not know if she would ever be able to thank him enough, if she met him. And maybe that is why they have never met again. A man like him probably doesn’t want thanks.)


End file.
